Week 39: (Pick a character) Do they have any goals/dreams/aspirations in life? What are they?
If they don't have any, does the lack of them ever bother them?
Want to suggest a question? Feel free to DM me!
I figured that since the "weekly show me a character" thread has been alive and running for a couple of years now, I could give a shot at doing similar with development questions! I'll post a new prompt each week both on this starter thread and the comment section! Feel free to post answers weekly or combine previous ones into one post - whichever feels the best for you.
Week 43: (Pick a character) How do they feel about big gatherings like parties? Do they enjoy having a lot of people around them or do they prefer less (or none)? How likely are they to approach people they don't know?
Previous weeks 2021
Week 1: (Pick a character) What would you consider to be the most impacting event in their life (that isn't their own birth or death) and why?
Week 2: (Pick a character) What makes them feel the most confident? Is it more internal (being good at something, succeeding in things etc) or more external (being praised, getting their skills acknowledged by others etc?
Week 3: What is your favourite part of character creation and why? Does it depend on character/time/your mood/etc?
Week 4: (Pick a character) How does your character generally react to failures, both their own and the failures of others?
Week 5: Do you have distinct "favourite" characters among your ocs, or does your current favourite change? Or do you consider them all "equals"?
Week 6: (Pick a character) If someone were to attack them out of nowhere, how would they try to defend themselves? Or would they try at all?
Week 7: How do you feel about your characters sharing traits/interests/etc with you? Do you try to avoid similarities or do you embrace them?
Week 8: When you create a new character, how much of their story do you work out on the spot? Do you prefer to get all details done at once or prefer to add more little by little?
Week 9: Which one of your characters would you consider to be the most "unexpected" character from you and why? The reason can be anything from their story to themes and even the design.
Week 10: When you're creating a new character, how much do you think about their family/guardians? Are they usually an active or a distant presence in your characters' lives?
Week 11: What was the first original character you posted online like? Do you still use them?
Week 12: (Pick a character) How do they feel about positive attention? Do they thrive in it or does it make them uncomfortable? Feel free to talk about the nuances of "positive attention" or attention in general if you want!
Week 13: What's the most drastic non-visual change you have made on a character? Why?
Week 14: Pick your oldest and your newest character on TH. Would they get along? What would their chemistry be like?
Week 15: What is your process when it comes to naming characters? Do name meanings matter to you? Do you pick a name with a "purpose" or based on a "feeling"?
Week 16: (Pick a character) What is their love language? Does it depend on people? Have it changed throughout their lives? Is it a combination of several types? (Suggested by PicklePantry)
Week 17: Pick your current most and least favorited characters. What do they have in common? What's different? When were they posted on TH? Do you think they still reflect your current tastes in character design and/or story?
Week 18: Have you ever learned a tip/trick related to character/worldbuilding development that changed the way you view your works? Or do you have some specific tips/tricks that you consider to have been particularly helpful for you?
Week 19: Have you ever had OC related "advice" that has done more harm to you than good? If yes, how did you end up learning out of it?
Week 20: (Pick a character) What's one memory they wish to never forget (and why)?
Week 21: What kind of compliments do you enjoy the most when it comes to your characters? Is it about design? Certain story elements (backstory, personality, trivia etc) or maybe about people finding them easy to understand?
Week 22: What do you find to be the most important aspect when you create or buy character designs for yourself? Is it the colors, clothes, silhouette, simple design to draw fast or something else?
Week 23: Pick two characters you'd consider similar to one another, either in design or story/personality. What would you consider to be their main differences?
Week 24: (Pick a character) How reliable would they consider themselves to be? Would other people agree with them?
Week 25: (Pick a character) What would they consider to be their greatest passion? Alternatively, what is something they find to be "their own special thing" that they delight in doing?
Week 26: When you're reading someone's character profile, where do you start? Is it the overview? Trivia? Backstory? Something else?
Week 27: If you had to name exactly one movie that has had a huge impact on you as a creator, which one would it be and why?
Week 28: How did you discover original character communities/the general concept of them on the internet? If you don't remember, what would you consider the most fun aspect of ocs for you right now?
Week 29: (Pick a character) If they had to pick an animal to describe themself, which one would they pick and why? Would you describe the character with the same animal or would your own pick for them be different?
Week 30: What's the most bizarre/interesting/weird piece of trivia you have learned while doing oc research? Did this trivia find its way into the character or some other character later on?
Week 31: (Pick a character) How do they express their anger? How does it appear to others, and how does the character themself feel about their own anger? Does their society encourage or discourage certain expressions of anger?
Week 32: What's the biggest story and/or personality related change you have made on a character? What made you want to change it?
Week 33: (Pick a character) What do they do on their free time? Do they have hobbies or have they had any in the past? What's something they wish they could put more time into (such as learning a skill, participating in some activity etc)?
Week 34: (Pick a character) What kind of impression does their appearance tend to give to others [in their worldsetting]? Is it an impression they want to give to others? Are they aware of the way people perceive them in the first place?
Week 35: Have you ever created a character but refrained from actually posting about them publicly? If yes, why? And if no, could you ever see yourself in a situation where that could happen?
Week 36: (Pick a character) What is their most treasured item and why? If they don't have any feel free to talk about the reason for it!
Week 37: (Pick a character) Who is their most trusted friend and why? How would the character describe this person? And if they don't have anyone they trust, feel free to talk about the reason for it!
Week 38: (Pick a character) What's their preferred sleeping position? Are they a calm or a restless sleeper, and do they like sleeping next to others or prefer sleeping alone?
Week 39: (Pick a character) What do they typically smell like? And why? Do they use a certain perfume, cologne, or deodorant that makes them smell a certain way? Suggested by soyyemilk
Week 40: (Pick a character) Where did they grow up in? Did they live in the same place/area most of their life or did they move places? How would your character describe the place they consider their childhood home (or the closest thing to it)?
Week 41: Which one of your characters would you consider the hardest to draw? If you're not an artist yourself, what would you imagine being the hardest?
Week 42: (Pick a character) How open are they about their feelings? Do they have anyone to talk to if they're worried? Are they more likely to talk about positive or negative feelings with others?
Previous weeks 2020:
Week 29: Which one of your currently posted characters has gone through the most changes throughout the years?
Week 30: Which part of character creation do you tend to struggle with the most?
Week 31: (Pick a character) What are they afraid of? How do they handle their fears? How do they respond to other people's fears (friends, strangers etc)?
Week 32: (Pick a character) How does your character feel about change? Do they welcome with open arms, or are they afraid of it?
Week 33: How do you go about making a new character? What kind of things do you like to keep in mind when planning their story/personality? Do you consider your other already existing characters when planning new ones (avoiding stuff already done with one character etc)?
Week 34: (Pick a character) What do they consider their greatest achievement? How about their lowest low moment?
Week 35: Do you have story elements or certain character tropes/cliches you love to use in your characters? If yes, what are they? If not, have you ever noticed common elements despite trying not to have them?
Week 36: (Pick a character) How do they handle money? How do they earn it, if at all?
Week 37: What kind of settings do you prefer to use in your works?
Week 38: What kind of villains do you prefer to create? Does your preference differ from what kind of villains you love to see in fiction?
Week 39: (Pick a character) Do they have any goals/dreams/aspirations in life? What are they? If they don't have any, does the lack of them ever bother them?
Week 40: Are there things in fiction you love to consume, but prefer not to create yourself?
Week 41: What do you usually do if you can't connect with a character you have or you can't make them work quite the way you'd like?
Week 42: (Pick a character) What kind of things get them excited? How are they like when excited?
Week 43: What type (human, feral, anthro, monster etc) of characters do you have the most? Have your tastes changed at any point?
Week 44: Do you have any fears or insecurities as a creator? If you do, are these more based on your work itself or the way other people will react to it, or both?
Week 45: Do you tie your interests/hobbies to your character in any way? Why/why not?
Week 46: Do you prefer developing your characters on your own or by interacting with other people (be it RPing or discussing)?
Week 47: What kind of questions do you prefer to be asked when it comes to your characters or setting?
Week 48: What kind of conflict do you like in fiction? Is it a conflict of interests? Morals? Based on lies or miscommunication? Something else entirely?
Week 49: When you get an idea for something you'd like to explore in fiction, are you more likely to make a whole new character for it or use the idea for an already existing character?
Week 50: How do you use your characters? Are they something you collect? Part of a story? For RP?
Week 51: What kind of layout do you use for your character profiles? What makes you like it?
Week 52: What do you do when you feel like you have ran out of ideas or you have hit a creative wall with your work?
Week 53: Do you like to look back at your creative works or do you prefer to just keep on going and paying little attention to what you have made in the past?
Junko doesn't really have any goals or aspirations outside of just enjoying life. She's never been sure of what to study or what kind of career path to take, and there's nothing academically that truly resonates with her. She never shows it but it bothers her a TON. Several people she knows have very passionate and important aspirations in life, and although she's naturally a free-spirited person, she feels as though having nothing to strive for makes her life aimless and she feels clueless compared to the people she knows. Junko likes to leave certain things up to chance but she doesn't want her long-term to be a complete mystery. She feels she needs a purpose she wants for herself, one that isn't imposed onto her, but she has a difficult time finding one.
About ten years ago Terry DID have hopes and dreams of wanting to teach music! But all positions were filled and he settled with being a homeroom teacher, and it gradually turned into his forever job.
Now he's pretty much given up on his dreams, and it exhausts him a LOT, but he doesn't necessarily hate it. He feels he has a lot more reach to the students as a homeroom teacher instead of a music one, and he's not at all bad at it either. He's not bothered at all by his current situation.
She dreams of a world where she doesn't have to fight and peace is there for all. A goal that pretty much all Showa era Kamen Riders were all about, and she is inspired by them mainly so they.
I don't always have goals for my characters in mind but surely others have em. Moriko has her sushi dreams but that isn't too fleshed out yet. And the ones that have no real goals don't mind that. Maybe a future character can explore that concept of not having a goal.
Week 40: Are there things in fiction you love to consume, but prefer not to create yourself?
(edit: changed the wording to be more inclusive)
Dystopia! I love reading the worlds dystopia builds, but they're difficult to write!
What are the boundaries, what is too much? too mild? I feel like it's hard to set the borders for that.
With that is also utopia! Does it seem possible in the future? How is it enforced?
Taking politics into account too, it's difficult for me to envision it haha, especially that we live in a world like this...
That said, I do have utopia and dystopia worlds and OCs that live in it.
Wk. 40
Ok so I really love those stories where there's a group of ppl trapped in a game situation or a physical location and they have to do a bunch of levels or tasks to try and escape or be free, but there's always plot twists and suspense and stuff. I'm no good at explaining in what I mean but if you look up manga like Liar Game and Tomodachi Game, that's what I had in mind. I can't write them myself because i'm too stupid uncreative to think up cool plots or thinking outside the box like those manga do.
I love manga like Kakegurui too; I love the gambling games and how they're played out~! But same for the above, I'm not that creative ;;
ok thinking about it, there's not much off the top of my head I can think of? Most of the stuff I like to write align with stuff I watch/read/play/etc.
I guess 'realistic' stuff? things that take place in the real world/present? I like watching movies and anime like that every once in a while, but when it comes to writing nahhh there needs to be some sci-fi or magic element to it to keep me interested.
My guilty pleasure is action movies :'v stuff just completely untethered from reality. great to sit doen and Consume for 90 minutes, but I could never write it unironically haha
Also I enjoy games with a high fantasy setting (TES games, dragon age) but I find that stuff a chore to write :'v can't bring myself 2 care about an elf unless he wants me to do a fetch quest pfff
Villains and bad guys, and I just really never like making them. Maybe at the moment but then change that down the road. At least to like, well okay they do bad stuff but how bad are they as people as is the case with my sorta yakuza family characters. I do have a bad guy at the moment but he's not very fleshed out in his badguy-ness. So who knows how long that'll last haha
Also I love characters overcoming hardships and stuff to better themselves, but very rarely give mine those hardships to overcome, or at least write it so they already overcame them.
I tend to enjoy fantasy rpgs with a good amount of worldbuilding, or at least an interesting world if theres not a huge amount of building to it. the worldbuilding and lore in the pokemon series being my favorite example. theres sooo much to enjoy with it: the pokemon themselves, the specific lore with each region, all of the different professions or jobs in the pokemon world, and much more. I'm pretty lazy and clueless when it comes to worldbuilding though, i'm usually unusure of where to start and i find building a whole new world to be quite the chore even when heavily inspired by another one. I definitely prefer developing characters much more than developing a world.
I also enjoy action (stuff akin to sakuga in animation or fighting with like swords and stuff) and occasionally horror ("edgy" looking art or art thats got a creepy look to it like junji ito) but i feel like i wouldnt be good at drawing either... or at the very least i wouldnt draw horror things all that well because its something i consume only occasionally and dont have much reference of it in my head.
I REALLY love horror but I'm not really good at writing longer horror stories! Like I do enjoy adding horror elements but those in itself don't make a story a horror story and my main genre is always something else. It doesn't help that my own personal fears are incredibly mundane and/or the kind that are difficult for most people to relate to because of being in a minority myself and the fear being heavily tied to it. I do want to learn though and I'm slowly but surely trying to up my horror element game but so far all my attempts have turned into a gay monster fest after a while lol
Also sorta echoing a bit of what's been said but everything to do with puzzle solving / logic or even political mind game sort of stuff is SO fascinating in fiction and I eat that up so fast but writing them is another thing entirely. I feel like I lack in being able to think outside the box and often even my real life problem solving is very convoluted and something other people don't really understand the process of. Things often make perfect sense to me but to others it's like steps are missing or there are weird extra steps. It's another thing I wish to learn though but as of right now it's not my highest priority.